Die Happy
by FerryBerry
Summary: ON HIATUS. S2. Alone in the school late at night, Quinn hears a mysterious noise and feels compelled to investigate. Despite the title, NO character death.


**Disclaimer:** I own nothing. All belongs to _Glee_ writers and creators.

**AU:** in that there is supernaturalness to be had

**Canon through:** 2x15 "Sexy", except that Quinn, Santana, and Brittany are still on the Cheerios

**Pairings:** strong hint at Faberry, mentions established Fuinn and past Finchel

**Rated:** M (for the nekkidness; despite the title, no one dies)

**A/N:** The beginning of this was originally for a different story I intended on completing at another time, but I eventually reversed my decision on following through with it, as too many people had already done the concept. This was just my small exploration of a different idea I'm far too fascinated with for my own mental wellbeing. I would actually be interested to see what people come up with for fanart for this one, if anyone is so inclined.

**Title from:** "Revolver" by Madonna ft. Lil Wayne, because it suits the myth I'm emulating

**Die Happy**

Quinn was pretty sure she hated Coach Sylvester.

She wasn't that familiar with the emotion—hate, that is—but she was fairly certain this is what it felt like. It might have been the fiery ache in every single muscle in her body, even the ones she wasn't aware she had, or the burning in her lungs and tightness in her chest. But she was pretty sure it was actually pure, straight-up hatred.

She'd known missing one of the woman's infamous optional (aka mandatory) practices over spring break was a bad—scratch that—horrible idea. She'd even known that explaining, in detail, her reasons for missing it to Satan's minion at least twelve times was going to do her absolutely no good. She was the captain. She was supposed to be at every practice if it killed her. In fact, Ghost Quinn would have to show up, too. End of story.

Unfortunately, Quinn's mother didn't see things this way. Frankly, she would've _rather_ been at the practice than at home with her sister's family. Which happened to consist of three of the most obnoxious little nephews known to man. They even gave Terri Schuester's sister's kids a run for their money. Honestly, Quinn had tried to get out of it, but as soon as Mom heard the word 'optional,' she decided that it didn't matter. Coach Sylvester would _certainly_ understand Quinn missing _one_ practice to work on 'family unity,' after all, right?

Wrong, Judy. Dead freaking wrong.

And now her youngest born was barely standing under the spray of steaming water in McKinley High's locker rooms, leaning her shaking arms against the wall because her knees were wobbling like crazy and it was the only way she was staying upright. Quinn was just thankful that the rest of her Cheerios (including Santana, thank the good Lord) had already gone home, so not only was her punishment private, but so was her humiliation.

In fact, even Sue and Becky had gone home. The former had begrudgingly applauded the fact that Quinn was still standing after the workout she gave her. Of course, the only reason Quinn knew she'd been complimenting her was because of the years of practice she'd had looking for such needles in haystacks. Becky had waved and smiled as she said her goodbye, and Quinn couldn't help but return it. After last year, how could she behave any differently toward the…well, 'different' people?

Except Rachel and JewFro, of course. The first was too obnoxious to treat civilly, the second too disgusting.

Though Rachel _had_ become more subdued since Finn dumped her—closer to how she used to behave, anyway. As in, not so detestable that Quinn wanted to stab her with a pen. It was just further proof that those two brought out the absolute worst in each other, Quinn thought. Rachel was almost bearable and Finn (though his evidently previously latent raging ego was still running rampant) seemed almost…well, zombie-like. Nowadays, more often than not, the boy was found zoning out, which wasn't unusual during school hours, but during makeout sessions?

She thought _way_ too much about those two and the status of their relationship and what it did to them, Quinn decided. This little…thing with Finn wasn't about him or his feelings. Honestly, it was helpful for him to be in such a constant state of unintelligibility; it made him far easier to control. And as for Rachel, well…no reason to think about her whatsoever. This year was about _Quinn_, no one else; so there was no need.

She shook her head roughly and sighed as the water began to run cold. Her limbs were still burning, but the pounding water had managed to ease her through the worst of the pain, she hoped. She switched off the shower, instantly grabbing a towel even though she was completely alone, and headed back toward her locker as she looped it around her naked body. Her first chore was painkillers, and she threw a couple back before unlocking her phone to check for messages.

Shit. Quinn sighed heavily and sent a quick text to her mother to reassure her she was still alive and put her normal after-practice routine on superspeed. She'd known Sue's punishment had taken quite a while (it had felt like _years_, after all), but evidently she'd done a couple more suicides than she'd thought or she'd been in the shower a tad too long. She was so late for dinner. Her mom was going to be pissed, and now that they were past the awkward 'you stood by while I was kicked out, but I got drunk and pregnant under your nose' stage, she was so capable of being grounded.

It was Mom's new favorite thing, actually, after she read this parenting book. Quinn had laughed in her face the first time she said it. That didn't last long once she realized her mother actually _meant it_. And the laughing hadn't helped her case.

Quinn had her Cheerios uniform back on and her duffel bag packed in record time, and then she was scooting out the door and preparing to put her calves through more hell on the dash to her car—her tennis shoes squeaked, announcing her abrupt halt as she passed the threshold. Usually when she was the last out of practice, the halls were still lit up (courtesy of the janitor being deathly afraid of Coach Sylvester's wrath) and some of the staff would be lingering in classrooms. When Mr. Schuester was still there, there was always jazz music echoing from the choir room.

But right now it was eerily silent in the usually bustling building. The air seemed chill in contrast to its normally unobserved warmth from the buzz of so many mobile bodies. Goose bumps sent the tiny hairs on her arm standing on end and she unconsciously went to brush them down, faltering in her movements when the previous sensation was pursued by a prickling sensation that trickled its way down her spine until she was left a shuddering mess.

It was silly. She was being silly.

She'd been in this building thousands of times, it was no different than when the lights were on and people were crowding it in herds as thick as sheep. A simple repositioning of her feet sent another squeak bounding off the walls and coming back to her, and she swallowed down the thickness in her throat. It was silly.

Her phone buzzed and every muscle in her body seemed to tense at once, releasing just as quickly and leaving her to sigh and fish the device from her duffel bag, keeping her motions as muted as possible. She sighed when she glimpsed several exclamation points at the end of whatever her mom had said and shook her head at her own ridiculousness, the reprimand dragging her back to earth and out of her wild imagination as she evened her breaths and her fingers danced over the keys with a finesse that only came from being a part of her generation.

Just as her thumb hovered over the 'send' button, a thunderous, shocking splash echoed from the depths of the building—the swimming pool.

Quinn felt her feet briefly lift from the floor with the power of the jolt that traveled through her body, her breaths instantly quickening from the steady pace she had had them set at, her heart pounding against her ribcage with the speed of a racehorse. Her phone nearly tumbled to the floor as her hands shook with nervous energy, her eyes going wide as her head swiveled on her neck, peering around the empty abyss surrounding her as she instinctively searched for the source of the disruption—despite knowing its exact origin.

Not a sound was following, she realized as her breathing and her heart began to quiet, both rates returning to normal in the wake of her adrenaline rush. A chuckle forced its way past the prevalent lump in her throat, the noise merrily bouncing down the hallways away from her, and she pressed a clammy palm to her abdomen to send a calming message through, reassuring her stomach that all was well. It didn't need to clench and roil in this fashion. There was nothing amiss; she was being stupid. It was probably a pool toy that hadn't been put away properly, finally teetering over the edge into the depths.

Her gut disagreed, vehemently so, and the fake amusement Quinn had plastered over her fear began to melt. The last time her stomach had acted up this way, she'd been having Braxton Hicks contractions. They may have been a false alarm, but she knew what that signal meant now. Something was off. What if the janitor had a mishap of some sort? What if someone…?

She hesitated. Mom was already pissed off. Delaying her arrival home would only make it worse. Or would it?

Quinn glanced at her message one more time. It was a lie, of course. She was not, in fact, in her car yet. But, with a heavy sigh, she pressed send anyway, stowing the phone away in her bag again, and trod quietly toward the pool, squeezing her sweaty fists around the strap of her duffel bag and repeating one mantra over and over in her mind: it was probably nothing.

She had never been so aware of her own breathing, each breath heaving out and coming back to her ears with double the weight, each inhale sounding more like a gulp in the silence of the bare hallways. Every attempt to push her horror-movie-like panting out of her mind was met with defeat. It was the only sound, the only thing to focus on, other than her nearby destination.

The silver door handle jutted out like some bizarre metal claw in the dim lighting provided by the rare window, which allowed faint rays of azure moonlight to filter through. Quinn ignored the slight tremble in her fingers as they wrapped themselves firmly around the cool metal, easing it downward in tandem with an intake of breath to brace herself for whatever may lay beyond the door. Her brain was telling her nothing; her stomach informed her otherwise, and her body was obeying that very visceral instinct's caution as she cracked open the passageway and slunk cautiously through, hazel eyes scanning the room instantly for signs that she should be kicking her reaction into flight.

Upon first glance, nothing appeared amiss in the rarely used privilege of a room. Flawless white towels were stacked neatly on shelves high on the wall; the unnecessary safety gear was in place by the pool net on the wall; the dome lights on the ceiling and along the tile wall of the pool itself were off; the heady scent of chlorine overwhelmed her senses with each breath, leaving her nostrils stinging and her breaths shallow. And then she picked up on it.

Faint lapping of water, slapping against tile in a rhythmic motion. Quinn's gaze flickered to the pool water itself, and in the muted moonlight, she saw the water bob and reflect, obliviously waving to its new visitor and betraying the one lurking beneath the surface. Her breath hitched. Her skin turned to gooseflesh. Her knees shook.

And she was about to either venture nearer to catch a glimpse of the intruder or run like hell—she wasn't sure which—when the gentle _lap-lap_ was overtaken by—singing. And it was….

A niggling of familiarity tugged at the back of Quinn's mind as the soft lull of a voice filled the empty room to the brim, until it had no choice but to wash over the cheerleader standing at the door. There were no discernible lyrics to the song, but what it lacked in poetry, it made up for in vocal perfection so remarkable it seemed imaginary. But it wasn't. She could _feel it_.

The female virtuoso washed over her feet first, and for a moment she envisioned she was standing on an evening-orange beach, with her naked toes squirming in the sand as the tide swept higher and higher, but as the voice rushed through a run up her quaking legs, curving over every millimeter of exposed porcelain skin, leaving itching tingles in its wake, her attention was pulled back to the room in which she stood and the ritardando the voice was in the midst of as it rose to the line of her waist. And she became very aware of the way every hair on her body stood at attention for this intangible being that sent a ripple up her spine and a shudder back down it, her eyelids fluttering shut at the attention and a soft, barely audible gasp of pleasure escaping her lips as her nipples stood erect under the wave of an marvelously controlled messa di voce.

And as it slipped back into a decrescendo, caressing the pale flesh of her neck and painting it with warmth to match the rest of her body, she arched into the sound, as though into a lover's embrace, and tasted the moisture on her own lips as the voice continued to coast and weave over the curves of her body, filling her with unparalleled craving and turning her into a shuddering mess—for entirely different reasons than earlier on—as it established a steady vibrato that seemed to settle directly between her legs.

Quinn moaned. Unabashedly, without regret, and she repeated the noise in a more desperate fashion as the voice began to retreat away from her wanting body, and she followed without hesitation. _More_ was all she wanted. More of that heaven that entered through her ears and filled her inside and out, every one of her senses receiving attention, every pore of her skin lavished with a tender note.

So she followed its call, stepping blindly forward, trusting it to lead her to more of this divinity. Her feet reached the ledge of the pool, and there she paused—to listen. It was the water. The undulating blue abyss just at the edge of her feet held the key to the beauty she sought.

A flicker of something flashed over the tiles, brief—a mere burst of silver that disappeared just as quickly as it had entered her vision. It didn't startle her, however. The voice was still coaxing, luring, begging her to join it below, and Quinn took a breath to brace herself for the plunge when—a splash sounded before she could lean in to dive.

No, not so much a splash as a crash as something began to emerge from the water on the other side of the pool, oblivious to her presence, and Quinn's jaw dropped and her body froze as her ears registered the very human timbre of the voice as it exited the water with its owner. The niggling of familiarity came back and was again cast aside as she incredulously took in the sight of her seducer as they—no, _she_—raised herself onto the ledge of the pool, water falling in what appeared to be two cascades down a defined back, shoulder blades straining against sk—or…_was_ it skin?

The water pouring over the naked curves of a voluptuous form made the 'skin' beneath it look silver, like the flash she had seen before, however briefly. It was more like crystal scales. Quinn squinted in disbelief, scarcely daring to trust her own eyes as she took in the smooth scales of the wet body, the two cascades now appearing more like…like wings to her delusional eyes. What looked like sea foam formed at the top, like ridges, and beneath it formed two waterfalls, curving in such a way to seem wing-like.

A swallow constricted her dry throat as her hazel gaze traveled over the toned muscles straining and stretching and occasionally bulging beneath the silvery skin that took on an almost ethereal glow under the moonlight, and then up a thin strand of hair that had plastered itself stubbornly to the voice's shoulder to the equally dark mass on the crown of her head. The curled tendrils were almost black in color, but the way they, too, reflected off the dim light in the room gave Quinn the impression of lighter strands within the dark, almost oiled-looking tresses.

She was still singing as she hung her elbows on the edge of the pool, occasionally dipping into a hum instead, her head tilted upward toward the glimpse of starry sky the window afforded. It was then that the niggling refused to be ignored. It was then that Quinn gasped and twisted, and that damn tennis shoe squeaked, and the voice whirled from her resting place, and the cheerleader was met with confirmation of what that niggling had been insisting since she first heard that voice.

Wide, horrified chocolate eyes—dark chocolate in the low lighting—ebony bangs plastered to her forehead just above them, a prominent nose, high and flushed cheekbones, and a pair of plump, pouting lips.

Quinn froze, heart thundering, chest heaving—both from the sudden onset of panic and the leftover arousal of the voice's caress and her own discreet ogling—and her head swam with too many thoughts as she gazed into the equally shocked eyes of Rachel Berry.

A heavenly cry of, "Quinn!" was all she heard before everything went black.


End file.
